Publication Date:
2008-03-22
Description:
The ability to select a better option from multiple acceptable ones is important for animals to optimize their resources. The mechanisms that underlie such decision-making processes are not well understood. We found that selection of egg-laying site in Drosophila melanogaster is a suitable system to probe the neural circuit that governs simple decision-making processes. First, Drosophila females pursue active probing of the environment before depositing each egg, apparently to evaluate site quality for every egg. Second, Drosophila females can either accept or reject a sucrose-containing medium, depending on the context. Last, communication of the "acceptability" of the sucrose-containing medium as an egg-laying option to the reproductive system depends on the function of a group of insulin-like peptide 7 (ILP7)-producing neurons. These findings suggest that selection of egg-laying site involves a simple decision-making process and provide an entry point toward a systematic dissection of this process.〈br /〉〈br /〉〈a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2581776/" target="_blank"〉〈img src="https://static.pubmed.gov/portal/portal3rc.fcgi/4089621/img/3977009" border="0"〉〈/a〉 〈a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2581776/" target="_blank"〉This paper as free author manuscript - peer-reviewed and accepted for publication〈/a〉〈br /〉〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Notes: 〈/span〉Yang, Chung-Hui -- Belawat, Priyanka -- Hafen, Ernst -- Jan, Lily Y -- Jan, Yuh-Nung -- R01 MH084234/MH/NIMH NIH HHS/ -- R01 NS040929/NS/NINDS NIH HHS/ -- R01 NS040929-08/NS/NINDS NIH HHS/ -- R01 NS047200-04/NS/NINDS NIH HHS/ -- R01 NS40929/NS/NINDS NIH HHS/ -- R37 NS040929/NS/NINDS NIH HHS/ -- Howard Hughes Medical Institute/ -- New York, N.Y. -- Science. 2008 Mar 21;319(5870):1679-83. doi: 10.1126/science.1151842.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Author address: 〈/span〉Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Department of Physiology, Biochemistry, and Biophysics, University of California at San Francisco, San Francisco, CA 94143-0725, USA.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Record origin:〈/span〉 〈a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18356529" target="_blank"〉PubMed〈/a〉
Keywords:
Animals
;
*Behavior, Animal
;
*Decision Making
;
Drosophila Proteins/metabolism
;
*Drosophila melanogaster/physiology
;
Female
;
*Models, Animal
;
Neurons/*physiology
;
Neuropeptides/metabolism
;
*Oviposition
Print ISSN:
0036-8075
Electronic ISSN:
1095-9203
Topics:
Biology
,
Chemistry and Pharmacology
,
Computer Science
,
Medicine
,
Natural Sciences in General
,
Physics
